It had been a while...

It is amazing how busy one gets working, and then in business school. I'm not sure that I actually have time to restart this blog now but I had my first canning success yesterday and it was too exciting not to share.

I'm currently trying to figure out what favors to give out at my wedding. We're doing a bit of a cooking theme and so I have been thinking about spice rubs and flavored salts and sugars. Cute, not too hard to make in bulk, has a personal touch. But also would take a decent amount of work. So I ordered a small number of jars that I wanted to test out, and planned to try making a flavored salt. I splurged the other day and went to whole foods, which is not close by. While there I saw a bag of Meyer lemons. They just looked glorious - big and beautiful. Perfect to zest into salt.

I only needed about 1 lemon to zest into the 1 cup of salt I used for my trial. It is quite yummy smelling, but i am unsure whether it is the right favor to use for my wedding. Hmmmm. 

But what else to do with the lemons after making the salt? I started googling ideas. Meyer lemon curd came up a bunch. Then I saw a Meyer lemon marmalade which uses the whole fruit. Very exciting. I started getting obsessed with the idea of making meyer lemon marmalade, even though I had never canned before. I read online a recommendation to follow the recipe for the blood orange marmalade by foodinjars. it just looked so amazing.

I ordered some ball jars and chopped up my lemons. I decided to use my mandoline to make the slices thinner, as a reviewer had recommended...and it kind of shredded them. Next time, I'll try the z-motion a later review recommended (of course I didn't see it until later!) But still, the lemon slices looked so glorious soaking overnight. Grabbed my handy dandy candy thermometer and cooked it down to a jammy little marmalade. So pretty. I was super paranoid about hitting the 220 degrees if I wasn't watching, early...no need to fear, it was pretty clear when I got to the marmalade stage, and definitely needed to cook down more than I had initially thought.

I had an extra lemon and a half, one missing its zest - but this was just enough for meyer lemon curd. So easy, to make, and smooth. I'm not convinced I actually like lemon curd (something about the egg yolks) but I recently made small fruit tarts with a filling that was lemon curd mixed with marscapone, and they were pretty fantastic. perhaps a good use for the lemon curd that I canned!

all in all, a successful experiment! I can't wait for my next canning adventure!